GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Grand Rapids Community College says its laboratory preschool program needs a new home.

Located at First United Methodist Church on Fulton Street, the program needs more space and modern classrooms, amenities that would enable instructors to provide care for more children while enriching the experience of GRCC students, said JaneAnn Benson, director of the laboratory preschool program.

“We are using every nook and cranny,” Benson said. “We are pretty much bursting at the seams in all of our spaces.”

GRCC is looking to the state for help.

Last month, it submitted a capital outlay request to the state for the construction of a $7.2 million preschool building. The state requested capital outlay proposals from all of Michigan’s 28 community colleges. If approved, the proposed 23,200-square-foot building would be built behind GRCC’s Applied Technology Center.

Take a walk through GRCC’s current preschool building and it’s not hard to see why Benson thinks a new building is needed.

Strollers, baby buggies and bookshelves line one hallway because little storage space is available. Because there’s few offices, students and instructors are often forced to have one-on-one discussions in the hall as opposed to a private room.

And because GRCC leases its space from the church, instructors on Friday must move some classroom materials away from areas the church uses on weekends, a task that administrators consider time consuming.

Benson said the space crunch is also preventing the program from expanding.

“It’s been a barrier for us to grow more programs, a barrier to add more classrooms,” she said. “There just isn’t space.”

Under the capital outlay process for community colleges, the state pays for up to half of a project’s price tag, with colleges covering the remainder. GRCC administrators said the state could decide which projects to fund by spring 2014.

GRCC’s laboratory preschool program is licensed to provide care for 80 children, a number that administrators would like to expand to 120. Students enrolled in the program work with instructors to oversee the care of the children as they pursue an associate’s degree in Early Childhood Development.

Lisa Freiburger, GRCC’s vice president for finance and administration, said the college is hopeful the state will see value in its proposal to expand the program. The program has been based at First United Methodist Church since the mid-1970s.

“While the church is a fantastic partner, that is not the ideal setting from a facilities standpoint,” she said. “We would really like to move toward a full early childhood center.”

For Cheryl Botham, an instructor, the benefits of such a move are clear.

On a recent weekday morning, she was staying busy inside the program’s toddler room, cradling one child in her arms and rocking another youngster’s crib using her foot.

She said students occasionally need to observe instructors caring for toddlers. But having too many students in the same room as the toddlers can disturb the toddlers. That’s where having an observation area would come in handy, Botham said.

“We at times have five or six students in the classroom including ourselves,” she said. “With children this age, they quite often are going through a stage of stranger anxiety so when the students come in they get very upset and cry.”

The college’s most recent capital outlay request was authorized in 2012. It received $5 million to put toward a $15.6 million renovation of Cook Academic Hall, which is expected to be finished by August 2014.

Andrea Pittman, of Comstock Park, said it would be nice to have a secure place to leave her coat and backpack.

“I had to (take) everything in the classroom with me,” she said. “I didn’t have any personal space.”

In its application to the state, GRCC said it’s working to gather its portion of the projects $7.2 million price tag.

The college is currently seeking funding from donors. It would also use dollars from its plant fund to cover some costs. If the project were funded, its operational cost “is not projected to have any impact on GRCC tuition costs,” the college’s application said.

“Our first goal is to meet our students’ needs,” Benson said.

But, she added: “Our children and our families and professionalizing our field is critical for our community. That is really where we move forward in our community.”

Brian McVicar covers education for MLive and The Grand Rapids Press. Email him at bmcvicar@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter